'Little Fires Everywhere' Showrunner Would "Love" to Do Season 2

From Harper's BAZAAR

Hulu's miniseries Little Fires Everywhere has come to a close, concluding a tense, gripping story about clashing mothers and intertwined families in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Headlined by Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon, the show is an adaptation of Celeste Ng's 2017 bestselling novel of the same name, brought to life by screenwriter Liz Tigelaar (Brothers and Sisters, Once Upon a Time) with a hyper-focus on race, class, privilege, and motherhood.

With the arrival of this week's eighth and final episode comes the inevitable question from streaming audiences: Will there be another season? The short answer is, we don't know. Since it's premiere in mid March, Little Fires has been touted as a miniseries, but that doesn't mean hope for another installment is completely lost, right? Could plans be changed now that the series scored five Emmy nominations too? Here's what we know.

There are no official plans for Season 2, but the showrunner would "love" to do it.

Tigelaar told Vulture, "Personally, I would love to do a season two because this was the best creative experience of my life."

But, there's some hesitancy about how to continue the story while honoring the source material. "My issue with season two is, I don’t know how Elena and Mia ever come together in an organic way," she continued. Tigelaar also told The Wrap, "Put it this way—with how it ends, I don’t know how Elena and Mia ever come into each other’s orbits again. I don’t know what a show is like if they are never in the same place, crossing each other again.”

To Vulture, the showrunner also said, "So, yes, I do think there are stories to tell. But that’s more of a spinoff than a second season. It’s hard to say good-bye, but there’s something about trying to extend it past its shelf life that I feel would dishonor what it was. It’s hard to say that because I would love to work in that writers’ room for the rest of my life."

Tigelaar also told Entertainment Weekly, "I'd be open to it in terms of this is the best job I've ever had." But she believes the story should end where it does. "In my heart, I feel like this is what it's always been, which is a limited series. It's a show with a beginning, middle, and an end. Everything burns down," she said.

The eight episodes "honor the book," she added. "This is a close-ended story to me and we've ended it where it ends."

Celeste Ng says "never say never."

Also speaking to Vulture, the bestselling author said, "You never say never, right?" She cited how Phoebe Waller-Bridge continued the story of Fleabag even though its first season seemed to be an enclosed story.

"But I think for me, right now, everything that I know about the characters is on the page," Ng added. "And I think that’s how Liz is feeling about it, too, from having talked to her. But you never know. These characters may come back to me with an idea about more story that needs to be told. Right now, I feel like the series did such a good job of ending where you have an idea of what people’s trajectory is going to be. We don’t see it, but we have an idea of what’s changed for each of them, and from that we can extrapolate."

One star has expressed interest in another season.

Gavin Lewis, who plays one of Elena Richardson's (Reese Witherspoon) four kids, Moody, played with the idea of continuing the series in a recent interview with The Wrap.

We're still waiting on official confirmation from Hulu, though.

Ng also hasn't turned down the idea of a sequel for her book.

Two years ago, the author dropped hints about continuing the Little Fires story. Responding to a fan in a GoodReads Q&A, she wrote, "Everything I know about the characters in Little Fires Everywhere is in the book--I promise I'm not holding out on you. But with that said, maybe they'll come back to me for more of their story--never say never. :)"

Ng is said to be working on her third book, her follow-up to Little Fires, but it's unclear if that will be a sequel to Elena Richardson and Mia Warren's story. In 2018, she tweeted about coming up with new ideas for the forthcoming work.

And speaking to Deseret News in 2019, the author said her next book would focus on themes she'll "probably keep coming back to," such as family, race, identity, and womanhood.

It's not uncommon for a limited series to get renewed.

Look at Big Little Lies, which also starred Witherspoon. After the success of the show's first (and what was supposed to be its only) season, HBO followed up with another chapter, this time adding Meryl Streep for a rare small screen role. Author Liane Moriarty had not written a sequel to her bestselling novel, but did pen a 50,000-word novella just for the show's second season. Even shows with volumes of source material, like Game of Thrones and Outlander, have deviated from their written counterparts.

Plus, it may benefit Hulu to invest in another installment of Little Fires. Deadline reported in March that the series had garnered more views in two weeks than any other drama on the streaming platform.

Watch this space for possible updates.

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